LEADERSHIP AND TOTAL CONTROL

LEADERSHIP AND TOTAL CONTROL

These are glorious times for Lacrosse Canada as, for once, it has the revenues to support its efforts in the management and development (!) of the game. These resources started to arrive when the membership, a few years ago, bought the Magnan-Lehmann proposal to progressively increase membership fees from 2$ per player to 15$ per player annually.

Long gone are the days when the Feds had to fight for a 1$ per player increase and face a barrage of criticism and refusals from the provinces who fiercely attacked LC (then the CLA) of ‘’doing nothing for the provinces’’ and never meting their expectations. Hours of fighting were on the agenda every year! Now LC is reaping 979,605$ yearly from membership fees alone. Now that is leadership; getting the provinces to agree to paying 15$ per player to LC and increasing their own membership fees to meet that decision. Nothing was imposed; nothing was ‘’forced down their throats’’; it was a provincial decision; majority rules. How LC did this will someday need to be explained but for now let’s agree that LC showed leadership.

The other great source of income was parachuted because of the inclusion of lacrosse within the 2028 Olympic Games. The federal grants to ‘’help’’ LC are now of 1,094,090$ and should remain the same (or increase) until the 2028 Games in Los Angeles. Now imagine for a short minute if lacrosse was to be included in the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games. That would mean, from now up to 2032, seven or eight years of collecting critically huge Federal funds to support High Performance and lacrosse’s Olympic status.

Lacrosse Canada’s leaders are going to be laughing all the way to the bank as Sport Canada is flowing monies to support Canada’s Sixes men and women’s teams all the way to the Olympic Games. We all know that Sixes barely exists in Canada; 1108 players were registered to LC in 2024 and LC does not even have one single National Championship in the sixes sector.

But Sixes made its way into the 2028 Olympic Games and monies are flowing. Imagine, again for one short minute, that in the 2025-26 LC budget (approved in a 17minute Board meeting on December 8^th 2024), says that ‘’650,000$ from Own the Podium and the Canadian Olympic Committee has to be spent on Sixes National Teams’’. That’s money spent on 24 players (and a few more here and there) so that ‘’we’’ Own the podium. How Lacrosse Canada has managed to convince the Feds to invest so mush is quite a feat. That, somehow, is also strategical leadership.

The real test will come when the members will realize that LC is yearly spending all this money on 24 players in order to win a gold medal. That will be the issue of the day for the next years until 2028 and LC’s leaders will have to convince the provinces to be more nationally oriented than provincially concerned! ‘’See the larger picture’’...

That will require control. Control over the Board; control over the staff; control over the provinces; control over the finances and budgets; control over the national programs in provincial territories; control over the sectors and their committees; control over the narratives emerging from LC; control over the information coming from LC so the monies (from the members and from Sport Canada) keep flowing and allow for smooth sailing and smooth ‘’take-over of the land’’.

The man in charge of these control-oriented actions will be the Executive Director.

Something like a one man show but with everyone’s approval and support. Because of his control over the Association and because he has all the tools to show his leadership.

The Executive Director (ED) must first control his Board of Directors and at the same time his staff.

He must repeat to ‘’his’’ Board members that they and are deciders, not him. He must always place them in situations where ‘’they’’ have to make the decisions. He must present them with his narratives and have them trust that his narratives are theirs. He must remind them that they are the leaders and the deciders and that he is there only to facilitate their decision-making processes. He is there to serve!

Now how does an ED control his Board of Directors?

First, by refusing to accept that he is controlling the Board and stating that they are in charge. Then by developing a language, narratives and exchanges in which the Board members are comfortable, respected, appreciated and successful. Board members have careers and corporate involvements outside lacrosse and wish not to be associated with failures or misfunctions. Remember the Hockey Canada Board members who all resigned in disgrace and who are nowhere to be seen now. Don’t embarrass the Board members be rather the king of smooch. Give them their needed visibility, travel opportunities and somehow make them feel grateful for it. Like an I owe you! This will happen at Lacrosse Canada.

Second, he will often present them with ‘’obvious’’ choices who are totally in line with the dominant narrative already adopted by the Board members. ‘’Let’s move quickly to more important matters’’. When decisions need to be made, he will present them, usually, with three options. One which will be quickly discarded and the other two for which he will present his lengthy analysis often leaving the Board members tired, surprised at their own lack of perspective but with an obvious decision. Remember; he who controls the narrative controls the decision-making process. Look for unanimity in the decision making process.

Third, he will ensure that the new colleagues who will join the Board are ‘’credible and competent’’. Joe Bleau will not be on the Board so the ED needs to control the selection process and the vetting process. That is fundamental to ensure that candidates who would want to make major changes to the direction LC is taking do not end up on the Board. Someone, for example, who would want LC to develop a national plan in order to increase the number of lacrosse players in Canada will, somehow, fail to meet the needs of the Association and will be rejected by the vetting committee who is totally committed to High Performance, Podiums and medals. ‘’Let’s be serious here’’. This will happen at Lacrosse Canada. Maybe even it’s happening now; you tell me!

Finally, he will need to be in constant contact with ‘’his’’ president so the president knows everything he needs to know in order to remain the president and ignore all that he needs to ignore to also remain the president. Seems rough, no, that’s business as usual for the ED.

The control ‘’over’’ the president will be made easier if the president is a new president. The newcomer will be bombarded by information and over whelmed by the ED’s knowledge for the affairs of the corporation. The ED’s strategy will be to make sure the president is comfortable and supportive of his ED, somehow helping him to ‘’do the job’’ for which ‘’we,’ have hired him. If the president ends up thinking or believing that he is in command and king of the Board things will flow normally and communication will be perfect. King of smooch. Cynical, no, that’s business. Every ED does that.

In a later post we will address the issue of the other areas where the ED needs to establish his strategical control in order to promote Lacrosse Canada and to maintain its reputation nationally and internationally.